After the Last Dance

  ‘Let’s make you comfy, Ms Beaumont,’ Neta said and Jane was pleased that there was still that thin veneer of dignity in place.

  Rose slowly opened her eyes as Neta asked her to lean forward. She closed them again as the pillows were placed behind her as if even that tiny kindness caused her undue suffering.

  Once a pillow had been placed underneath Rose’s feet for ominous reasons that Neta said they didn’t need to know about, the nurse folded her hands and backed out of the room. ‘I’ll be with Miss Liddy if you need me.’

  Jane and Leo looked at each other and she wondered if he knew how helpless she felt. Then he touched her arm as he walked to the bed, just a simple brush of his fingers, but it signified something had changed between them. Jane pulled up a chair alongside his.

  ‘So, we went to Lullington Bay, got the things you wanted,’ he said and Rose’s eyes opened.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about my friend Mickey Flynn?’ Even her voice was different today, barely more than a croak. ‘He used to say that I owed him so many favours that I’d have to live to be a hundred before I finished paying them off. Do you think he’ll take an IOU?’

  ‘I’m sure he will, darling,’ Jane said. ‘Though he’s probably forgotten by now.’

  ‘Forgetting is easy. It’s remembering that’s hard. One wants to remember only the good times but the bad times have a way of staying with you too.’

  She lapsed into silence. Leo glanced at Jane, his eyebrows raised, because neither of them knew if these were her last profound words or just jumbled thoughts brought on by the morphine that was being administered by a pump on the other side of the bed, which cheerfully whirred as it went about its business.

  They sat there. Jane listened to the pump and stared out at the naked treetops she could see from the window. She really wished she’d brought up a cup of tea and a magazine to flick through. Weeks ago, Jane had had a hazy notion that because Rose was old and had cancer she’d go to bed one night and simply not wake up. She hadn’t expected that death might involve long stretches of sitting around, waiting, having to pretend that you were lost in thought when actually you were quite bored.

  ‘Did you get my things?’ Rose asked and Leo gave a little start as if he’d been dozing.

  ‘Yeah, I already said. Everything on the list.’

  ‘How is Lullington Bay? My roses?’

  ‘The garden looked beautiful,’ Leo said, though the garden had been a shadowy cluster of trees and bushes when they’d visited. ‘The house was exactly as I remembered it.’

  Rose smiled and the rigidity of her limbs eased as Leo talked about Lullington Bay; of those endless days on the beach and sunburned, sticky nights. The stray cat they’d taken in and called Mr Bobbins, who’d turned out to be a Mrs Bobbins and had given birth to a litter of kittens in Rose’s bed.

  Leo talked, his voice hoarse, until Dr Howard arrived. For Rose to open her eyes and dare to admit that the pain was ‘quite bad’, was something else that was very, very different.

  They went down to the kitchen, where Lydia was in the middle of a baking frenzy. Gingerbread, scones, shortbread, a fruitcake ‘but only sultanas. Rose hates dried fruit. Always used to say that mixed peel and chopped dates ruined a perfectly good sponge.’

  Neither Jane or Leo needed to point out that it had been days, maybe even weeks, since Rose had eaten anything as substantial as a piece of cake, because there were so many things that didn’t need to be said any more.

  Though Dr Howard had lots to say when he came into the kitchen twenty minutes later.

  He talked about Rose’s kidneys most of all. About how they were in danger of shutting down and that if Rose would agree to a catheter, she could be put on a rapid drip.

  ‘If Rose doesn’t want it, I’m not sure I could persuade her,’ Leo said.

  ‘Someone will have to make decisions for her if she’s not capable of making them for herself,’ Dr Howard said. Today he didn’t even attempt to be smooth and dapper. ‘That’s going to happen sooner rather than later.’

  ‘But she’s not like she was yesterday,’ Leo said, as they walked the doctor out. ‘So that has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?’

  ‘A temporary respite, I fear. There will come a time when you might decide that it’s best for Ms Beaumont to keep her sedated until she passes.’

  ‘But she wouldn’t be hurting, would she?’ Jane asked, because she couldn’t imagine how awful it would be for Rose to be trapped between worlds, with nothing but the pain to keep her here. ‘How much morphine can you prescribe without her overdosing?’

  ‘I’m not a punitive man.’ The doctor paused as he put on his hat – he was one of those men who still wore an old-fashioned trilby. ‘I don’t believe in unnecessary suffering and sometimes if the drugs do their work before the body fails, well, then it can be a blessing.’

  When he was gone, Leo sat down heavily on the bottom step of the stairs. ‘Fuck.’ He rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, but when he took them away, his eyes were dry. ‘Fucking hell. I don’t know if I can do this.’

  Jane stroked her fingers through his hair as she stepped past him. ‘This is why you came back. To do what’s best for Rose, so yes, you can.’

  Rose slept for the entire day and when Agnieska arrived to take over from Neta, Leo and Jane gave up their vigil. They still hadn’t talked about what had happened the night before. Leo wasn’t going to mention it first. Not a chance in hell. Because if he did, then Jane would laugh it off, call him darling, become flippant rather than admit that she was perilously close to actual real feelings and emotions. But it turned out neither of them needed to say anything.

  Jane stroked her hand slowly and deliberately against Leo as she walked past him into his bedroom. Without thinking, he immediately had her pressed up against the wall, soft where he was suddenly painfully and achingly hard. It was a clumsy dance to the bed where they spent the night rediscovering the taste and texture of each other. Leo supposed he should have felt guilty that he and Jane had picked now, this moment, to stumble towards something that resembled happiness, but he didn’t. It could have been another strategy, another feint in Jane’s master plan, but Leo needed to lose himself for hours and hours that all bled into each other and Jane had the means.

  Afterwards, Jane fell asleep before Leo did. Sleep didn’t smooth away the strains of the day, because she wasn’t still. Her eyelids twitched as if she was dreaming hard, her teeth worried at her bottom lip as she shifted first one way, then the other. Leo watched until he couldn’t bear to watch any more. She’d kept the true heart of herself locked away and watching her now felt like an intrusion; as if he were reading her private papers, rifling through her drawers. In the end, he retrieved the pillows that they’d tossed on the floor and placed them in the middle of the bed again, so they were separate, apart, and then it was easy to fall asleep.

  It was past eleven the next day when Neta came into the kitchen to tell them that Rose was awake and asking for them. ‘Did you go to Lullington Bay?’ Rose asked as soon as they walked into the room. ‘How were my roses?’

  Leo took a step back, but Jane pushed him forward. He could do this. He had no other choice. ‘Your roses are fine. Beautiful. No greenfly on them.’

  ‘Good.’ Despite sleeping for almost twenty-four hours, Rose’s eyes were bloodshot. She had another gaily-patterned scarf tied around her head, which made a mockery of her sunken cheeks and parched lips. ‘Where are my things? Did you come across a small wooden box?’

  Leo squatted down and opened the trunk. Inside were bundles of letters, some yellowed with age like Rose, others tissue-thin and edged with blue and red airmail chevrons. There was a small rosewood box that Leo passed to Jane who passed it to Rose. Her fingers fumbled with the catch, then stirred up the collection of books of matches, cocktail sticks, menus from nightclubs and restaurants. At the bottom was a small, tattered piece of cardboard with a photo stuck on it.

  ‘It really happened
. I was really there,’ she said, as she tried to close her fingers around it.

  Jane reached over and plucked it out of the box, then held it up so Leo could see it. It was a membership card for Rainbow Corner. Staring back at them was a teenage Rose; hair elaborately rolled, her smile dark with lipstick. ‘Gosh, darling, you look like a movie star.’

  ‘Hedy Lamarr.’ Rose crooked her fingers. ‘Where are the photos? They’re in a album.’

  Leo carefully rifled through old birthday cards and theatre programmes until he unearthed a dark green leather-bound book. Rose took it with a tiny sigh, but before she opened it she patted the bed beside her.

  ‘Come here so you can both see,’ she said and once Jane was settled precariously so she wouldn’t jostle Rose and Leo was on his knees, elbows resting on the edge of the bed, Rose started flicking through the book.

  There was Rose as a tiny baby swathed in an enormous frilly christening gown. School photos: gap-toothed and freckled. Then a sullen teenage Rose on a seafront, arms folded, chin tucked down, a ferocious frown on her face. She looked, though it pained Leo to admit it, a lot like he had during his own sullen, teen years. And then…

  ‘Oh! You’re in London now!’ Jane said gleefully, as they looked at Rose standing in Trafalgar Square with another girl, skirts hiked up, legs in a showgirl pose, flanking a short man with a pencil moustache, a sharp suit and an ingratiating smile. ‘Who are you with?’

  ‘That’s Mickey Flynn, the old reprobate.’ Rose’s croak couldn’t disguise her delight. ‘I don’t know who she is. Mickey’s lady friends would come and go. Go, mostly.’

  Leo perched on the other side of the bed and watched the two women, their heads together, as Jane exclaimed at Rose all gussied up in her finest and posing for the camera.

  They came to a Christmas celebration: a spindly, sparsely decorated tree in the background, three children kneeling in front of the adults who were arranged on and around a sofa. Rose tried to trace each face but her fingers wouldn’t obey her. ‘My other family. This used to be the lounge downstairs and that’s Yves, Jacques, Madeleine not crying for once, Gisèle and that’s Thérèse and Hélène on either side of little Paul. Nineteen forty-five. That was a hard Christmas. But Phyllis’s mother sent us a chicken and a plum cake. Every year until she died. She was far more terrifying than I ever was.’

  ‘I doubt that.’ Leo rolled his eyes. ‘You’re next-level terrifying, Rose.’

  Rose managed to snort. ‘If I were feeling better, you’d get a clip round the ear for that.’

  Leo had been worried that this would be too much for Rose when even opening her eyes the day before had been a Herculean task, but this morning Rose was happy, or what passed for happy when she was so close to the end. Jane also seemed happy to pore over someone else’s family photographs because she didn’t have any of her own. Whether her parents were really dead or not didn’t matter. She’d still chosen not to have a family.

  Leo hadn’t had too many family photo ops over the last few years either. He was just a blurry face in other people’s photos.

  Who’s the drunk-looking dude?

  Oh, a friend of a friend. Can’t remember his name but later that night he puked in the swimming pool .

  Leo shook his head, turned his attention to the photo that Rose and Jane were looking at. ‘Who’s that blonde girl?’ He tried to sound eager and interested. ‘She looks all kinds of fun.’

  ‘It’s Sylvia. My honorary big sister.’

  Leo leaned over to stare at the laughing girl in black and white, hands on her hips, head thrown back, but Rose was already turning to the next page, then she said with quiet satisfaction, ‘Ah, there we all are.’

  She pointed to each of them in turn: Phyllis, who looked earnest and slightly anxious; next to her was Maggie, her angular face wreathed in smoke from the cigarette she was clutching in her right hand and Sylvia and Rose with their arms around each other. All of them smiling, all of them wearing the same red lipstick in the hand-tinted photograph.

  ‘It’s your girls, Rose,’ Jane said, as if she wanted to jump into the picture with them.

  In all the time he’d known her, Rose had never been one for sentimentality, but with Jane’s help she took the photo out of the album and rested it on her chest, over her heart. ‘I had no photos of them. They were all lost, but one of my old friends from Rainbow Corner found this, years after the war, and sent it to me.’

  ‘I’m so glad we fetched it for you,’ Jane breathed. Rose smiled at her and Leo felt as if he was intruding. Then Jane stroked his hand where it rested on the bed and he belonged.

  ‘Have you got pictures of the four of you after the war?’ Leo asked.

  ‘I’d love to see what you all looked like in the fifties when you could get really glammed up,’ Jane added but Rose turned her head away.

  ‘There was no “after the war”,’ she said quietly. ‘There was a bomb. Direct hit. They lay in pieces in the street.’

  Jane gripped Leo’s hand tight enough that he wanted to whimper. ‘When you talked about them… I never thought they’d died,’ Jane said so bitterly that even Rose looked startled.

  ‘Of course they died. It was obvious.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘Jane! It’s not like Rose did it on purpose,’ Leo said with a glance at Rose who was lying with her eyes closed, picture still pinned to her heart. He frowned, inched closer, then straightened up and took a shaky breath. His eyes met Jane’s, as if to say, It ’s all right, she’s still here.

  Jane was instantly contrite. ‘Darling, I’m sorry that you had so little time with them.’

  ‘I think she’s asleep,’ Leo said. ‘We should go.’

  They left the album on Rose’s pillow so it was within reach and were just unpacking the trunk, placing each little box stuffed with memories on the wheeled table that fitted snugly over the bed, when Rose opened her eyes again.

  ‘I’m not sleeping.’ Rose raised her head and trembled with the effort it took. ‘You couldn’t possibly understand how fleeting it all was. That suddenly the people you loved, were just gone. You’d say, “Night, night,” then the next morning they’d disappeared. Their time card had been stamped. And the tragedy of it all is that they never finished being who they were meant to be.’

  When Jane popped in to see Rose a day later, the picture of her Rainbow Corner girls was in a silver frame on her bedside table.

  Leo had gone out somewhere with George. Rose had refused to see George for three days running and they’d found him on the back step with Lydia, crying as he tried to light a cigarette. ‘George, I’ve got to go and see a man about a dog. I could do with some company,’ Leo had said and Jane had watched them walk down the mews, Leo’s arm round George’s shoulders. She was sure that they were only going to go as far as the nearest pub, but if Leo came back drunk, Jane would forgive him this once.

  As it was, she could hardly refuse to sit with Rose. She wanted to, though, because it was painful to sit and watch someone you’d grown quite fond of deteriorate in front of you.

  Jane sat in an armchair she’d placed as far away from the bed as she dared and leafed through fashion magazines, but more often than not she’d gaze around the room, out of the window, anywhere but at Rose who mostly slept now. Sleep was meant to be peaceful, a reprieve from the part you played during the day, but Rose was anything but peaceful.

  Her panting breaths sounded painful, the whimpers far worse, her face contorted into a rictus grimace though Neta said that soon, Rose would stop fighting. ‘Rose will know when she’s ready,’ she’d told Lydia and Jane. Neta was very zen.

  Jane knew that she should have come up with a different plan. All the weeks in this house with these people had got to her. She wasn’t the glittering creature that she’d striven so hard to become but she wasn’t the girl hiding under the bed either. She was stuck somewhere between the two of them and the only time that she was really happy lately was when she was with Leo. Then she di
dn’t have to think at all. Just feel. His fingers, his mouth, his cock all doing such wonderful things to her that she actually began to imagine what the future might hold for both of them if they decided to make a go of it. Though you could plead the fifth on any thoughts you had when you were coasting a post-orgasm high.

  Instead of holding something back, Jane had given Leo and Rose everything that she was capable of giving, which might not be that much but when it was time to walk away she’d leave that best part of her behind. Then that little voice, more insistent by the day, reminded Jane that she didn’t have to walk away. But how could she stay? The person that Leo was becoming deserved so much better.

  Then Rose jolted back to consciousness with a pained, surprised cry. She lay there, not moving, eyes darting wildly around the room.

  Jane stood up and walked over to the bed. She poured Rose some water from the jug, then gestured at the beaker. ‘Will you drink something, darling?’